Wednesday, June 14, 2006
6:33 PM
I was given the assignment of writing down reflections for the trip to China this year. After thinking for a few days, I've decided to write about this:
One of the many highlights of the China trip this year was the opportunity to play my favourite song: Qu Yuan Fu - Ju Song. It is my favourite song not only because its melody is very moving, but also because behind the wonderful song, is the great man, Qu Yuan, whom I really admire.
Qu Yuan was a great politician and poet in the Warring States Period (476 BC - 221 BC) in the state of Chu. During that time, because the State of Qin was becoming strong and dangerous, Qu Yuan tried to form alliances with the neighbouring states so that they might have a chance against the mighty and evil Qin. However, because there were some bad eggs who corrupted the Chu king, Qu Yuan was instead exiled.
During his exile, he travelled and wrote a lot of poems and songs that expressed how much he loved his country, and how sad he was that his country was going to get invaded by foreigners. While in exile, he did not resort to doing something silly like trying to muster popular support for better foreign affairs administration in the capital so as to pressure the king to make more astute political decisions. Instead, he did the right thing of falling into depression and writing touching poems that did not point out the flaws in the current administration.
So, when the capital of Chu was finally captured by the Qin army in 278 BC, he couldn't take the grief and committed suicide by jumping into the Miluo River.
Qu Yuan was a good minister who carried out effective political reforms, and he was also an accomplished poet whose poems still make people today feel extremely patriotic and sad when they read them. Nobody really seem to take note of that, but, in my opinion, his greatest accomplishment and what everyone should remember most about him is still his committing of suicide.
If us normal people, especially Singaporeans, committed suicide, we'd probably get hand-cuffed and all that because suicide is still murder according to the British Law, and then maybe our suicide will turn up in the media, but it's a very extremely small chance and only if our suicide was part of a disturbing social trend that was worth highlighting for the sake of social awareness for the general public. Nobody would even know our names because our identity has to be protected and all that.
However, when Qu Yuan jumped into the river, he managed to mobilize the whole neighbourhood to look for his body in the river, and then when they couldn't find it, they made and threw perfectly good rice dumplings that could have been used to feed poor and starving peasants into the river to prevent the fishes from eating his body. And then 2000 years later, we celebrate his suicide by eating rice dumplings and racing in dragon boats every duan wu jie (5th day of 5th month of lunar calendar).
So the lesson that I have learnt from Qu Yuan's story is that when we suffer setbacks in life, we should wallow in self-pity and depression and give up altogether. We should not try to help ourselves, nor accept any form of help to recover from the setback, but we should keep telling other people how depressed and upset we are in our poetry. So that when we do commit suicide, people may start to notice our works of art and might even create a holiday or two to celebrate our suicides!
...
Heh, the trip to China with DHSCO was much much more than just a song about someone who committed suicide, but I guess I just couldn't resist writing this. Qu Yuan's not just about the suicide I suppose, but it seems that's what everyone (not least me) remembers about him.
(P.S I hope nobody took my exhortation to commit suicide seriously...)
edit: (By nobody, I really mean nobody, except Chunsz...)
Comments:
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2 comment)
oh no zic-hun... ur article has inspired me to seek the quick end. komm, susser tod. see my face in the next day's papers...in the u noe wat section. lol.
# posted by 
: 1:26 PM
: 1:26 PM
Never encourage suicide. Even jokingly. You do not come even close to understanding the terrorising power of depression. You're still whole and fresh. You should not wish to have your self carved out from the inside leaving behind only a hollow shell of a human being.
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# posted by : 1:17 PM
: 1:17 PM